Depending on the applications for which a portable data carrier is to be used, various data and programs are stored in its memory. At least a part of these data or programs is written into a nonvolatile memory of the portable data carrier during or after the production of the portable data carrier. This writing process is usually referred to as personalization. The term “personalization” therein is used both as a generic term for writing any desired data and programs and as a special term for writing data which are individual for a portable data carrier. “Personalization” furthermore also includes measures carried out on the portable data carrier itself such as the labeling. However, such personalization measures fundamentally do not form part of the subject matter of the present invention.
For writing data and programs provided equally for several portable data carriers frequently also the term “initialization” is used. In a personalization the process of initializing represents a first of two steps of personalizing a data carrier. When the data carrier is initialized it is provided with general data which are identical for all data carriers of the same type. This type of personalization data will be referred to as initialization data in the following. In the second step, the “individualization”, each data carrier is provided with individualization data, which contain for example such data which adapt the individual data carrier to the end customer.
Unless explicitly referring to the initialization, the term “personalization” shall always be understood to have its general meaning, which does not make any exact distinction according to the type of data written. In other words, the term “personalization” used below in principle encompasses both a personalization in the narrower sense and an initialization.
Accordingly, according to the state of the art (W. Rankl, W. Effing: Handbuch der Chipkarten. [Handbook of chip cards.] Munich4, 2002), the personalization is usually carried out in two production steps, respectively executing the initialization and the individualization. This is most frequently done using different apparatus and methods. In the first step the identical initialization data are written into the data carriers to be personalized, in the second step the individualization data.
The process of initializing data carriers is a critical step within the overall production process of the data carriers, since the amount of time required for writing the initialization data into the nonvolatile memory is comparatively great and has a substantial influence on the production costs. For future generations of data carriers whose storage capacity will be substantially greater than today's, this problem will be exacerbated, since the amount of initialization data will grow.
There are initialization machines in which a plurality of data carriers can be initialized in parallel. However, for this purpose a corresponding number of reading devices is required for transmitting the initialization data, as each data carrier is initialized by means of one reading device. Likewise, one or several correspondingly arranged control devices are required for the reading devices, making these machines expensive. Consequently the degree of parallelization is comparatively small.
To increase the output it is known from DE 199 58 599 to provide a memory for taking up batch data sets for a plurality of chip cards, containing respectively uniform initialization data and uniform personalization data for each card. A batch of cards to be personalized is first initialized uniformly using the initialization data set. Subsequently the personalization data are transmitted card by card.
The initialization step can also be sped up by firstly initializing only one single data carrier in conventional fashion, by means of logical commands. Afterwards a memory image of the complete memory of this data carrier is generated and used for initializing the further data carriers of the same type with the aid of the physical memory addresses. Such a copy of the memory is called image, designating a copy of the original memory that is true to every bit. It contains more information than just the data stored in the memory of the master data carrier, such as the structure of the file system and the like. This makes it possible to produce ala exact, true-to-bit reproduction of the data carrier quickly, since direct use can be made of hardware functions and physical memory addresses.
In order to achieve a high output the personalization can generally be carried out with several portable data carriers at once. However, in the case of contactless portable data carriers a simultaneous data transmission between several portable data carriers and a personalization device can lead to data collisions and thereby to a loss of data on the transmission channel. This can be avoided by using an anti-collision algorithm, with the aid of which an individual portable data carrier can be selected among a plurality of contactless portable data carriers and can be addressed specifically. Such anti-collision algorithms are for example defined in the standards ISO/IEC 14443-3 or ISO/IEC 15693-3. However, using an anti-collision algorithm in carrying out the personalization has the disadvantage that the output is reduced again.
A data collision can also be prevented by spatially separating the portable data carriers. The spatial separation can be achieved in that the portable data carriers are singled and fed to the same writing-/reading device successively. However, this is again detrimental to the achievable output. Likewise it is possible to feed respectively one portable data carrier to several writing-/reading devices simultaneously. However, therein it is necessary to shield the individual writing-/reading devices from each other in regard of high-frequency in such a way that for each writing-/reading device communication is possible exclusively with one portable data carrier. Such shielding requires a relatively great effort. Furthermore, a great number of writing-/reading devices are required to achieve a high output.
In the personalization of contact-type portable data carriers similar problems occur. Thus the controlling of a plurality of writing-/reading devices leads to elaborate constructions and requires complex control software.
In the production of portable data carriers it is generally necessary to electrically contact the integrated circuits contained in the data carriers, for example in order to carry out tests or to write data into the integrated circuits. For this purpose a contacting device of a production machine is pressed against a contact field of the portable data carrier. The contact field has several contact surfaces, each of which is connected to a connector of the integrated circuit.